1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information providing system, an information providing apparatus, and an information providing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, before going out shopping, generally, a shopping list is made on a piece of paper describing ingredients necessary for a cooking recipe, and taken for shopping. Recently, there has been proposed a technique for setting the shopping list in a portable terminal.
For example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2002-073774 proposes a technique for sending a list of ingredients to the portable terminal through an email. In the list, written information includes ingredient information including quantity information items of all ingredients necessary for menus in a predetermined period of time. Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2003-208574 proposes a technique for creating a shopping memo in a portable terminal. Specifically, ingredients of a cooking recipe are stored in a storage unit, and a desired item to be purchased is selected from the ingredients of the cooking recipe stored in the storage unit.
However, in the above-described techniques, the ingredient list or shopping list (shopping-memo) is only displayed on a display unit of the portable terminal. Thus, a user of the portable terminal has to shop while searching for those products in a store, in accordance with the shopping list displayed on the display unit.
That is, the sales conditions of the products set in the shopping list can be known only by glancing at an advertisement flier or by actually entering and visiting the store. Therefore, it cannot be said that the user of the portable terminal can comfortably shop.